Home after a month-plus jaunt across the U.S.

I was lucky to be included in Scion’s latest Installation art tour and was flown out for Miami Art Basel along with all of the other artists on the tour. The opening was really nice and I met a ton of really interesting folks as well as seeing some old friends. Thanks very much to Ray and Karen for inviting me to be on the tour and making it all happen. I appreciate it very much. Thanks to Ray, Acme, TTJ, Patrick, Yem, Codak and Skypage for ferrying me around Miami. You guys rule.

The tour will be stopping in Phoenix, DC, Minneapolis, NYC, San Jose, Philly, PDX, and LA. Check out the schedule here.

I got to design the eighth in Pinball Publishing’s designer card series recently and they came off the press the other day. Hot pink and lime green soy inks on recycled white cardstock with rounded corners. More pics soon!

The text from the brief for my recent workshop at Pacific Northwest College of Art following my lecture to the senior undergraduate students:

“A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist.”

-R. Buckminster Fuller

The city of the Future needs to be peopled with utopian citizens, humans seeking to realize their ultimate potential in the utopian city.

As the graphic designers of the future operating at the crossroads of culture in the city of tomorrow, what other cultural roles will you incorporate into your Utopian City/Self? 

We will work together to create and illustrate aspects of a collective, modular potential citizenry of the future. We will be projecting ourselves into the future to design our ultimate selves of tomorrow.

The students, the instructor Pete McCracken, and I worked together to create a modular poster/supergraphic utilizing analog processes. It was really fun.
Thanks to Pete, Paul, and the radical PNCA participants!

The Meeting Modernity series of found photographs is the focus of Néojaponisme’s first traveling exhibition.

Recently unearthed outside of the city of Sano in Tochigi-ken, this series of pictures documents Japan as it engaged with modernization and commercial photography in the Meiji and Taishō Periods. The series is comprised of portrait photography in particular.

The exhibition makes it’s sophomore appearance at Reading Frenzy, a small press emporium and gallery in Portland, Oregon (kitty-corner from Powell’s Books) on this very Thursday. Meeting Modernity is accompanied by a trio of essays by Ian Lynam, W. David Marx, and Matt Treyvaud reflecting the collection of photographs, the history of Japanese photography, commercial art, and Japanese society.

A limited edition of full-color Meeting Modernity postcard sets from the previous exhibition in Los Angeles’ Young Art will be available at Reading Frenzy.

MEETING MODERNITY
January 8–February 1 2009

Opening Reception: Thursday January 8, 2009 6–9pm

More: Reading Frenzy 921 SW Oak St. Portland, OR 97205 If you are in Portland, we heartily encourage you to visit the exhibition.

In other news…

I have an essay that I wrote and design in the latest issue of Idea Magazine about the current state of logo design. The issue is titled “How does graphic design CHANGE?“.

Website for Tokyo-based business owner and writer Nicole Fall.

Probably the last post of 2008. New work added in Print + Product: boombox & packaging design for Rap-Up and Lasonic’s limited edition ghetto blaster and a one-off skateboard for Lesque. New in Apparel: an old shirt for Point Line Plane.

Also, James Chae interviewed me for Graphic Hug here.

For December, the final month of 2008, Néojaponisme has only been running “2008: The Year in Review” mini pieces, covering various topics from the year that is/was. Within, we discuss the finer points of Japan’s economy, political system, pop culture, and technological progress!

Skateboard graphic for Lesque. Rejected design that I liked so much I had some manufactured.

Shirt graphics for Skin Graft Records‘ stalwarts, Point Line Plane.

Limited edition ghetto blaster design for Lasonic and Rap-Up magazine. I designed the unit graphics, as well as all packaging and advertising.

If you happen to be in Sundance country in less than a month, go peep The Clone Returns Home, directed by Kanji Nakajima, executive produced by Wim Wenders, produced by the wondrous Hikari, and graphic design by myself. Hikari and I just returned from a wondrous international sojourn across borders and deadlines to bring the film an updated name and identity informed by JAXA’s early identity explorations as much as Dutch Modernism. If you are in town, GO SEE THE MOVIE! You’ll be pleasantly surprised – it’s in a similar vein to Paris, Texas‘ rheumy/rummy displacement combined with Cha No Aji‘s timing. I’m super-duper-amped to be associated with this film in one fashion or another. I love work from the dawn of sci-fi and this film carries that torch unabashedly while being wide-eyed and beautiful and wholly original. The cinematography is insane and I was happy to give it the graphic workup it so needed.

Someone went and got twin tattoos of the logo I designed for Yacht! Other folks have gotten tattoos of other band logos and artwork I’ve done, but this is the first photographic evidence in the past few years. Good stuff.